Language Poetry

Taking my third class with Matthias Regan Ph.D at the University of Chicago downtown Chicago I am again impressed with the quality of his teaching. Recently we have been talking about the language poets - those who came into the poetry scene around 1973 in reaction to the conventional rhyme and meter poets. The intention of language poetry was to be disruptive of old ways of thinking about poetry.

Lyn Hejinia says in her essay "Introduction from The Language of Inquiry" "Language is nothing but meanings, and meanings are nothing but a flow of contexts. Such contexts rarely coalesce into images, rarely come to terms. They are transitions, transmutations, the endless radiating of denotation into relation.

Poetry, to use William James's phrase, "is in the transitions as much as in the terms connected." This is not to say that poetry is about transitions but that "aboutness" (in poetry, but, I would argue, also in life) is transitional, transitory; indeed, poetry (and perhaps life) calls conventional notions of "aboutness" into question."

We read in class a poem by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge who is an influential language poet. She was influenced by New York school poets like John Ashbury as well as language poets Barbara Guest, Anne Waldman, Charles Bernstein, as well as artist Susan Bee.

The poems are composed by having one long line, then another underneath it. As we read each line it became apparent that each line existed to be read by itself. Not connected to the next line. A woman sitting next to me and I agreed that was fine. There is some abstract painting I just look at and move on not try to figure out meaning of the painting. Same thing in life: I don't know what is going on sometimes and that is just ok. The line on the page was the same thing for me - it didn't have to have a particular meaning, the language was interesting and I did not need to derive some particular meaning from the poem.

The rest of the class erupted. They were angry. It wasn't a poem. It wasn't even as good as a first grader's poetry. It was awful stuff these words on this page. I thought this was hilarious. If the goal was to be disruptive, it worked!

Leaving and walking down the corridor toward the elevator the other woman and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Mei Mei had accomplished her goal - she disrupted a way of thinking about poetry and it worked.

Poetry is alive and well and making us think in other than images and metaphors, rhyme and meter. What fun.